Pulling Out Stitches by Faith

Cath0lic Worker Joseph House/Mercedes Gallese

George asked me to pull the stitches out of his head.

He had slipped on some ice and fell. 

We were living at Joseph House, a Catholic Worker house of hospitality on First Street in New York City.

George had an appointment to get the stitches removed, but he wasn't going back to the emergency room where he had been treated. 

So there he sat, in the guys' dorm. I stood next to him with a pair of scissors.

He was perfectly comfortable letting me take them out. I wasn't.

I mentioned to George that I had worked in a few hospitals in two different emergency rooms when trauma medicine was the next new thing.

I had been an admitting clerk. The person who asked a bunch of questions before you were seen by a triage nurse. I had seen a few things up close, but there was a huge chasm between what I saw and what I knew.

George had been a reporter for the Detroit Free Press before he came to New York. He had seen a lot of life and it had gotten to him. He was a quiet guy, but on the cynical side. His life experience had resulted in choosing me over the medical establishment to remove the stitches.

"George, I've never done anything like this," I started to explain. 

"That's ok. Use the scissors to cut the stitches and pull them out. It's not that complicated."

So I reluctantly started to cut the first stitch. And kept at it. 

My medical knowledge increased by a thousand percent that day.

What seemed to be complicated turned out to be pretty simple.

Religion is supposed to be simple too. Theology, if it's based on any sort of religious principle ought to be as well.

For 30 years I taught a religion class for kids. During that time there was a lot of scripture spoken, and much discussion in an effort to help first-to-fourth-graders gain a deeper appreciation of God.

Teaching the kids was a lot of fun. It was one of the most joyful experiences I've ever had.

Starry Night Over the Rhone/Vincent van Gogh

But looking back on it, if there were one final lesson I'd like to share it would be this one:

Take a small sheet of paper.

Cut it to about an inch square and keep it in front of you.

The one-inch square represents what the entire human race, since the beginning of time knows about God.

Now, take a pencil and draw a pinpoint dot in the middle of that square.

That dot represents what any one person understands about God.

Everything else that exists outside of the square inch of paper represents who God truly is. 

Wow! If that doesn't inspire some humility, I don't know what could.

I knew nothing about taking out stitches until George asked me to pull some out of his head.

I learned something, but realized there is a whole lot more about medicine I don't know, even though I had worked in a few hospitals.

George was so grateful for my help that he gave me a poster of Starry Night Over the Rhone by Van Gogh. It's one of my favorites. That poster now hangs above the fireplace in my home to remind me of George, and what I learned, and what I have yet to know.